Mr. Numnuts and Politics on the Internet

Hi, my name is Mr. Numnuts. I like butter, potatoes, and screaming at the television. When my body hits warm water, my face begins to feel like sand. For awhile, I thought I was an armadillo. I don’t enjoy talking about the weather. Face lifts scare me. My favorite game is darts, but I’ll play Mario Kart if you ask. I have two cats and a fleece sweater.

Sorry, Mr. Numnuts stole my computer again. Let’s talk about sex! Actually wait no, now is not the time. NOW IS NOT THE TIME! Let’s talk about… people losing themselves on the internet! Yeah… that’s where I was going last time wasn’t it? Nice. Real nice. God that’s nice. Just slide that thing right under… oh yeah right there. Oooeeee that feels nice. So nice.

So uh… people. Internet. People on the internet. People looking for a sense of belonging and camaraderie on the internet and finding NOTHING BUT VITRIOL AND TRIBAL WARFARE. Wow, that got aggressive. I had a sip of caffeine this morning so look the fuck out.

Anywho, waaaiitttt whaaattttt. Anywho is not a word? It has to be any-who or any who? But you can say anyway or anyone? Bullshit. Sorcery I tell you! You know I’ve never been diagnosed with ADD but I think I have it.

Okay, cool. Back to people on the internet. I think our lack of community and intimacy leads many people to seek it out on the internet. The internet is so large that you can find anyone who thinks the same stuff you do and form a group, which is fine to an extent. It’s cool to relate to people and establish some almost-connections… until it turns into a close-minded circle jerk (and not the fun kind) where outsiders turn into enemies.

It depends on the group you choose, too. I think smaller groups are better for the reason I explained in the last post of feeling significant enough within the group to be noticed. What I see happen a lot, though, is people who are in need of a group end up choosing one of the political parties. People easily get wrapped up in the whole liberal or conservative thing on line. This always seems to degenerate, partly (in my opinion) because the group is so damn large. People seem to be seeking a sense of community and shared values, but they’re left without the community part. It’s just a group of individuals who all happen to believe pretty much the same thing. And the best way for any individual to be recognized within the group is to signal some sort of widespread commonality. So, people either say something the group has already established they believe, or they highlight the common enemy. Thus, we enter circle-jerk-they’re-the-worst-aren’t-they land.

Going on Twitter or Facebook always makes me laugh for this reason. It’s just a bunch of people finding the worst member of the group which opposes theirs and then claiming that member of the group is representative of the entire group. Some liberal will find the worst, most idiotic racist conservative you could possibly conjure up, post it on their wall or timeline or whatever the fuckity fuck, and then say “THIS IS WHAT A CONSERVATIVE LOOKS LIKE!” Then a conservative will turn around and find some equally mentally malnourished liberal spouting out racist and sexist things while claiming to be against racism and sexism and go “THIS IS WHAT A LIBERAL LOOKS LIKE! SNOWFLAKES!”

It turns into this game where you don’t actually have to do anything positive as long as you point out how terrible the enemy is. It’s like you get a virtual point every time you find some idiot on the other side. The shitty thing about it is that people get the feeling of working together to fight a common enemy, but it’s devoid of the only good thing about that, which is the intimacy within the community. It just turns into this narcissistic signal war against anyone with an opposing thought. And there you go, that describes the political discourse in modern American society. Yay!